This Wednesday, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez firmly denied involvement in any “widespread corruption” surrounding his government and the Socialist Party (PSOE) before the deputies, once again forced to defend his actions amid the multiplication of judicial cases targeting his close associates.
The head of the government, one of the few left-wing leaders in Europe, spoke in a solemn address to Parliament in Madrid, to explain, at his request, the entirety of these investigations and trials that are piling up and poisoning the life of the executive, weakened for months.
“Some political and media actors are trying to mix everything, to put everything on the same level and thus confuse people (and) create a sense of widespread corruption that, I tell you, does not exist,” he deplored in the chamber.
“I have never been aware of, nor tolerated any of these practices,” continued the 54-year-old socialist leader, defending his government’s action against corruption since coming to power in 2018.
That year, a motion of censure had toppled the right-wing government of then-conservative Mariano Rajoy, mired in corruption scandals.
At the time, this motion had been defended notably by the socialist deputy José Luis Ábalos, who later became Pedro Sánchez’s Minister of Transport… and who himself was sentenced on Monday to 24 years in prison for corruption.
“We are very calm,” Pedro Sánchez said on Wednesday in a speech interrupted several times by the jeers of opposition deputies, acknowledging, however, that the executive and the PSOE, which he has led since 2017, were “not perfect,” “not infallible.”
